100 Days: Day 2

03/12/2009

The House.

Lloyd anxiously strummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He attempted to turn over the engine one more time. No use. He starred blankly ahead, they’d all be well into the Vol-au-vents by now, without the vaguest idea of how best to pour scorn onto the host’s culinary techniques and decorative faux pas. ‘Oh Lloyd, you are bad’ they’d all chirp in sly admiration if only he hadn’t trusted that oik with his head gasket. He’d even ironed pleats into his new jeans, all for nothing, he hated ironing pleats.

He squinted out of the steamed drivers window at the austere building adjacent. ‘Now who would live in a house like that’ he thought out loud for the unfathomable-nth time in his lifetime. He felt unaccountably nervous, but resolved that he must approach the house if he were to successfully acquire a phone with which to ring the AA.

He locked the car despite not having seen another soul for the past 3 hours and commenced up the untended shingle path toward the looming mass of jutting masonry. The house looked as if it had been constructed by a child with only a picture book knowledge of architecture, but, he conceded, it had a rustic charm, much like the inhabitants he hoped.

He arrived at the doorstep and noted the door was slightly ajar.

‘Hello’, he whisper-shouted into the dark slither. There was no response. ‘Come on Lloyd’ he thought to himself, ‘they used to pay you to poke around strangers inner sanctums’. The brief memory of his significance was enough to provide him with the confidence to plough ahead and enter the building whereupon he stumbled about in the darkness for a bit. He located a light switch. Click.

‘Surprise!’ exclaimed the group in unison. And they were. A chorus of ‘Lloyd Grossman?’ did two or three laps around the room before a silence demanded an explanation.

‘I ah’ stifled Lloyd. A rather surprised looking bearded man appeared behind Lloyd at the doorway and shifted a bemused glare between the group and a panic stricken Lloyd Grossman.

‘John, surprise’ said a pipe smoking man at the front of the crowd, ‘do you know Lloyd Grossman?’

‘Kevin’, replied bearded John with a short sharp nod, ‘not personally, no’. All eyes were on Lloyd.

‘I, I’m sorry I didn’t intend to gatecrash your soirée and John, Kevin, everyone I’m sorry to have stolen John’s surprise. My car broke down outside your house. The door was open so I came in in the hope of using your phone to call the AA. I’m sorry I just entered, I was just looking for whoever lives here, which as I now know is you John. John may I use you phone?’ Everyone accepted this as a perfectly valid explanation, Lloyd rang the AA who arrived rather promptly and he made it to the party with just enough time to tell a few people his new moderately amusing anecdote.